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More on the DNA Story

Get Religion gets it right with comments on the recent LA Times story. Quotes from the GR piece: "This DNA kerfuffle has been going on for years, long enough that I was wondering why the Times was covering it yesterday." That was my reaction, too. "I really do think this is a fascinating story, but the notion that this is jolting the bedrock of the Mormon faith might be overstating it." I suppose one needs strong headlines to sell papers.

Speaking of headlines, doesn't jolting bedrock seem like a mixed metaphor? The headline, you recall, was Bedrock of a Faith Jolted. You might fracture or chip away at bedrock or a foundation. Or you might jolt individuals, such as some members of the Church. But bedrock really doesn't get jolted. Or maybe this is just a clever way to make the point that the supposed "jolt" really hasn't made much of an impact on the Church. Somehow I don't think that was the hidden message the Times was trying to get across.

A report in the L A Times by William Lobdell (February 16, 2006) asserted that some Mormons were troubled by a “lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans”. In fact about one third of Native American males selected for DNA research belong to Y chromosome lineage groups commonly found in modern Jews. This includes the Q-P36 lineage group that is ancestral to the primary Native American lineage group Q3. Q-P36 is found in 5% of Ashkenazi Jews [1], 5% of Iraqi Jews [2] and a significant number of Iranian Jews [3]. Other west Eurasian lineages found in Native American test subjects include R, E3b, J, F, G, and I [4]. All of these are also found in modern Jews. The trouble isn’t a “lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans”, but a lack of discernible facts in Lobdell’s report.

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of MormonismGivens and Grow's warts-and-all biography of this energetic missionary, author, and apostle whose LDS career spanned Joseph Smith's life, the emigration to Utah, and Brigham Young's early leadership of the Church in Utah. My Review